This report from the National Education Policy Center sums up what was predicted years ago about so-called reform's punitive accountability system. I added a link to researched policy that has been ignored by promoters of "no excuses" accountability.

How long will money and power continue to suppress the voice of knowledgeable and HONEST educators?

NAEPscuses: Making Sense of Excuse-Making from the No-Excuses Contingent

BOULDER, CO (October 28, 2015) – This morning’s release of results from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) reports a dip in scores, according to multiple sources. These lower grades on the Nation’s Report Card are not good news for anyone, but they are particularly bad news for those who have been vigorously advocating for “no excuses” approaches — standards-based testing and accountability policies like No Child Left Behind. Such policies follow a predictable logic: (a) schools are failing; and (b) schools will quickly and somewhat miraculously improve if we implement a high-stakes regime that makes educators responsible for increasing students’ test scores.

To be sure, the sampling approach used by NAEP and the lack of student-level data prohibit direct causal inferences about specific policies. Although such causal claims are made all the time, they are not warranted. It is not legitimate to point to a favored policy in Massachusetts and validly claim that this policy caused that state to do well, or to a disfavored policy in West Virginia and claim that it caused that state to do poorly.

However, as Dr. Bill Mathis and I explained eight months ago in an NEPC Policy Memo, it is possible to validly assert, based in part on NAEP trends, that the promises of education’s test-driven reformers over the past couple decades have been unfulfilled. The potpourri of education “reform” policy has not moved the needle—even though reformers, from Bush to Duncan, repeatedly assured us that it would.

This is the tragedy. It has distracted policymakers’ attention away from the extensive research showing that, in a very meaningful way, achievement is caused by opportunities to learn. It has diverted them from the truth that the achievement gap is caused by the opportunity gap. Those advocating for today’s policies have pushed policymakers to disregard the reality that the opportunity gap arises more from out-of-school factors than inside-of-school factors.

Instead, they assured us that success was a simple matter of adults looking beyond crumbling buildings and looking away from the real-life challenges of living with racism or poverty. As a substitute, we were told to look toward a “no excuses” expectation for all children. This mantra has driven policy for an entire generation of students. The mantra was so powerful that we as a nation were able to ignore the facts and fail to provide our children with opportunities to learn.

So schools with low test scores were labeled “failing” and were shut down or reconstituted or turned over to private operators of charter schools. Voucher and neovoucher policies pulled students out of “failing schools” (again, those with low test scores) and moved them to private schools. Teachers whose students’ test scores didn’t meet targets were publicly shamed or denied pay or even dismissed. Our entire public schooling structure became intensely focused on increasing test scores.

But once we admit that those test scores are driven overwhelmingly by students’ poverty- and racism-related experiences outside of school, then “failing” schools are little more than schools enrolling the children in the communities that we as a society have failed.

In the face of the mounting evidence that “reform” policies have come up short, what are advocates saying now? The first sign came a week ago, when Mike Petrilli, president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, heard rumors about lower NAEP scores and pre-emptively announced that the dip was likely caused by the recession triggered by the 2008 financial crisis. (He neglected to mention that this crisis was due to the same sort of deregulatory policies promoted for education by Fordham and similar advocates.) We must, he tells us, “acknowledge the strong link between students’ socioeconomic status and their academic achievement.” In short, he gave the same “excuse” that “no-excuses” reformers have condemned year after year.

Mr. Petrilli is correct, of course — not about his implicit causal argument for the new NAEP scores — but about the strong link to poverty.

A point comparable to Petrilli’s is made by Matt Barnum in “The Seventy Four,” who tells his readers that “schools have an extremely important impact on student learning, but out-of-school factors have an even greater effect on student test scores.” Indeed, he continues, “The many out-of-school factors driving achievement — the economy, access to healthcare, etc. — mean we can’t even be sure that changes in NAEP scores had anything to do with changes in schools.” The co-founder and Editor-in-Chief of The Seventy Four is Campbell Brown, whose primary advocacy is for teachers’ tenure protections to be based on students’ test scores. She has very little tolerance for teachers’ excuse-making about how the students’ poverty undermines their ability to drive those scores up.

A similar publication called the “Education Post,” which advocates for standards-based testing and accountability policies, also came out with a pre-release article, reminding people that the general trend on NAEP scores is up. (What they neglected to mention is that the trend was up before the reform era as well; there has been steady growth for 30 years.) That article also suggests that lower NAEP scores may be because Common Core’s focus has shifted teaching away from the sorts of test items included in the NAEP. Chad Aldeman of Bellwether Education Partners, a consultancy think tank that advocates for the same testing and accountability policies, pointed to the changing demographics of NAEP test-takers and to Simpson’s Paradox and the need to focus on subgroups.

Yes, it’s possible that NAEP scores could be impacted by Common-Core-induced changes in what’s taught. And as noted above, those scores certainly are impacted by poverty. But why are “no excuses” reformers suddenly so busy making excuses?

It seems that the only lesson the new excuse-makers are asking us to draw from their nod to the importance of poverty is something like, “Don’t worry. The status-quo reform policies are probably still working.” Even though these advocates are now vocally recognizing the crushing impact of poverty, the policy implication of their epiphany remains beyond their grasp. Can they really be asking policymakers to keep focusing on test-based accountability in hopes that we might detect a small uptick in 15 years (at the cost of broad and engaging learning)? Won’t they acknowledge that our outcomes will continue to be disappointing unless and until we address poverty itself?

In terms of educational policy, this points to continued investment in, and research about, community schools and other wrap-around approaches. But more broadly, it points to the need to think about educational improvement within a broader set of policies addressing housing, employment, wealth inequality and the social safety net.

It’s long past time to recognize that any benefits of test-based accountability policies are at best very small, and any meager benefits teased out are more than counterbalanced by negative unintended consequences. Judging by the rhetoric of this past weekend from the Obama Administration and others, there’s a growing recognition that the American people are ready to move on. But we shouldn’t hold our breath waiting for status-quo reformers who have ridden the “no excuses” bandwagon for a generation to accept this reality and start advocating for policies that focus on inputs and close opportunity gaps. We also shouldn’t hold our breath waiting for them to call upon states to undo those voucher and turnaround and charter-conversion policies based on “failing schools.”

But maybe they could at least stop making excuses.

The mission of the National Education Policy Center is to produce and disseminate high-quality, peer-reviewed research to inform education policy discussions. We are guided by the belief that the democratic governance of public education is strengthened when policies are based on sound evidence. For more information on the NEPC, please visit http://nepc.colorado.edu/.

"If a child struggles to clear the high bar at five feet, she will not become a "world class" jumper because someone raised the bar to six feet and yelled "jump higher," or if her “poor” performance is used to punish her coach." - - CommonSense

The Times-Picayune editorial board, unsurprisingly, did not even interview BESE candidates this year before making their recommendations. Their endorsement for my opponent and their incorrect description of BESE District 1 show that they not only can't get it right, they have no intention to. They just listen to the big money.

TP posted this incorrect description of BESE District 1 which only includes St.Tammany, Jefferson and parts of Orleans Parishes - "The 1st District covers most of East Jefferson; small parts of West Jefferson, New Orleans and St. Charles Parish; and all of St. Tammany, Washington and Tangipahoa parishes."

I wonder if the TP will have any interest in talking (or listening) to me when I get elected and end the corrupt term of my opponent. Sure he supports charters. He ran one himself and entered into an illegal contract with a previous Jefferson Parish Schools Superintendent to fund it:

In addition to having enjoyed the unfettered support of SEIU (which has much to gain from the Ed. Reform Package), Mr. Garvey was a founding member and chairman of Jefferson Community School --LA’s first Charter School which had been established as an alternative school for students having been expelled from other schools in the system. (Garvey falsely claims in his recent campaign mail out that I am controlled by the "Washington DC UNION BOSSES" ) http://bit.ly/1RMqheW

In ’06, the year prior to his election to BESE, Mr. Garvey signed-off on an agreement with the Jefferson Parish School Board on behalf of JCS. This agreement simply continued the business model under which the Charter School had worked since its inception in 1996: JCS was not paid “per pupil” in attendance; rather, it was paid “per slot allotted” which means that, no matter how many students were actually in attendance, JCS was guaranteed payment for 125 slots.

In 2011, while still under the agreement entered into by Mr. Garvey, JCS brought in nearly $700,000 while serving only 10 students and employing 7 teachers. By Nov. of that same year, enrollment had dropped to only 8 students, but the payments continued to roll in.

When the parish school board finally decided that spending $87,500 per pupil was a tad extravagant, Mr. Garvey (who, even though serving on BESE, was reported to also be serving in an advisory capacity to JCS) believed that the school should continue as usual, because “There are plenty enough (at-risk) students in the system that it should work out."http://bit.ly/1GKbMlk

Thankfully, common sense ruled the day. A new agreement was reached in 2012 which changed the Charter School’s funding to the same “per pupil” basis as the rest of the public schools in the state. Additionally, JCS was “reinvented as a school for all types of at-risk students,” rather than serving only those students that had been expelled. To take the sting out of implementing these changes, the Jefferson Parish School Board gave JCS “a one-time grant of $220,000 to help in the transition process.”http://bit.ly/1G9pNhA

However, even these changes could not help JCS. It closed its doors after the 2012-2013 school year; and, last month, officially filed for dissolution and liquidation in the 24th Judicial District Court. http://bit.ly/1LovULO

Billionaires Eli Broad and Alice and Jim Walton have contributed a combined $650,000 to Baton Rouge businessman Lane Grigsby’s PAC, Empower Louisiana, so that Grigsby might use it to try to retain a corporate-reform-bent majority on the state’s education board, BESE, from 2016-19.

The BESE election is scheduled for October 24, 2015.

According to Empower Louisiana’s campaign finance report (07-17-15 to 09-14-15), Jim and Alice Walton each donated $200,000 on August 20, 2015, and Broad contributed $250,000 on September 10, 2015.

The total on the above report is $763,710, which means that as of September 14, 2015, money from two billionaires from Arkansas and one billionaire from California constitutes the principal funding for Grigsby’s efforts to preserve a BESE majority known for supporting charters and vouchers without equally supporting adequate oversight; supporting high-stakes testing without supporting timely, clear, comprehensive reporting of testing results, and for allying with a state superintendent known for hiding and manipulating data, refusing to honor public records requests, and refusing to consistently audit the Louisiana Department of Education (LDOE).

Grigsby considers the above to be the desired course for Louisiana’s state board of education. According to the October 01, 2015, Advocate, he plans to spend his PARC’s predominately Walton and Broad money on 3 of the 11 BESE seats:

Grigsby’s group — it is limited to independent expenditures — will rely mostly on television and radio advertisements and direct mail.

Races where it will be involved include BESE vice president Jim Garvey, of Metairie, against challenger Lee Barrios, of Abita Springs; incumbent Holly Boffy, of Youngsville, against challenger Mike Kreamer, of Lafayette and incumbent Mary Harris, of Shreveport, against challengers Tony Davis, of Natchitoches, and Glynis Johnston, of Shreveport.